The creation and processing of hard, non-compliant particles in a fluid mixture is desirable for a variety of industrial processes including, for example, the preparation of inks, paints, abrasive coatings, and the like. In addition, fluid mixtures of hard particles are used extensively in the coating of magnetic media, such as magnetic disks, magnetic tape or other magnetic media used for data storage. For magnetic media, the mixture may contain magnetic particles and a polymeric binder carried in a solvent. The coating process involves application of the mixture to a substrate, followed by a drying process to remove the solvent.
For high-density magnetic media and other industrial processes, the size and uniformity of the various particles is extremely important. To produce particles in a desired size range, industrial fluid processing techniques make use of one or more fluid processing devices. A fluid processing device processes the fluid mixture in a manner that subjects particles or other units of microstructure in the mixture to intense energy dissipation through the generation of a combination of intense shear and extensional forces. In this manner, agglomerations of the particles in the fluid mixture can be broken down into smaller sized particles.